BOSTON, MASS.- Berkshire-based artist Jim Schantz, who has exhibited at Pucker Gallery for 28 years, is currently having his first exhibition at the venerable gallery’s new Newbury Street location.

Jim Schantz is surely a poet—a poet with paints, brushes, and sticks of pastel—who looks at nature with admiration, wonder, and devotion. His art celebrates bodies of water, reflections, and moments of illumination, reveling in the transition from lightness to darkness and back again. The works in this exhibition extend his lifelong exploration of color and his affinity for the mystery of water. They are rooted in both the Romantic notion that nature’s greatness inspires awe and the Fauvist use of dramatic color. In a departure for Schantz, these new works demonstrate looser brushwork and heightened motion. In the catalogue for the exhibition, Schantz illuminates the need for balance between movement and stillness: “In a world that is in a constant state of rapid change, we must seek balance by being open to spaces that allows us to pause, contemplate, absorb the moment, and feel the rhythm of the soul.”

Schantz is exhibiting alongside the elegant ceramics of Hideaki Miyamura, whose remarkable technical ability with form and glaze offer a light, intelligent, and graceful counterpoint to Schantz’ landscapes. In Miyamura’s work, color and form create a harmonic resonance and viewers are seduced by the work’s magnetic visual appeal.

Jim Schantz has found his spiritual and artistic center in the Berkshire region of Massachusetts. He studied art in California, Maine, New York and London, and earned an MFA from the University of California, Davis, where he worked with Robert Arneson and Wayne Theibaud. His evocative and richly worked landscapes masterfully capture times of day, seasons, and qualities of light that provide solace for both the artist and viewer. His works are included in museums and public collections throughout the United States.

Hideaki Miyamura is a Japanese–born American studio potter working in New Hampshire. After college at Western Michigan University, he returned to Japan to apprentice with master potter, Shurei Miura. He experimented with over 10,000 test pieces, using countless formulas to develop original glazes. His works are included in significant museum collections, including the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.